Page 488 - tess-of-the-durbervilles

observing her from some point or other, though she could
not say where. There was an excuse for his remaining, for
when the threshed rick drew near its final sheaves a little
ratting was always done, and men unconnected with the
threshing sometimes dropped in for that performance—
sporting characters of all descriptions, gents with terriers
and facetious pipes, roughs with sticks and stones.
But there was another hour’s work before the layer of live
rats at the base of the stack would be reached; and as the
evening light in the direction of the Giant’s Hill by Abbot’s-
Cernel dissolved away, the white-faced moon of the season
arose from the horizon that lay towards Middleton Abbey
and Shottsford on the other side. For the last hour or two
Marian had felt uneasy about Tess, whom she could not get
near enough to speak to, the other women having kept up
their strength by drinking ale, and Tess having done with-
out it through traditionary dread, owing to its results at her
home in childhood. But Tess still kept going: if she could
not fill her part she would have to leave; and this contin-
gency, which she would have regarded with equanimity and
even with relief a month or two earlier, had become a terror
since d’Urberville had begun to hover round her.
The sheaf-pitchers and feeders had now worked the rick
so low that people on the ground could talk to them. To
Tess’s surprise Farmer Groby came up on the machine to
her, and said that if she desired to join her friend he did
not wish her to keep on any longer, and would send some-
body else to take her place. The ‘friend’ was d’Urberville,
she knew, and also that this concession had been granted in

488 Tess of the d’Urbervilles